


Many Miles to Go

by deathofaraven



Series: Prompt Responses [3]
Category: Fable (Video Games), Fable 3 (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Road Trip, F/M, and that Albion Gothic meme that should come back, balverines (implied), but it's also crack and fluff and fun, inspired by really old b-horror movies, it's not really a prompt response, it's probabably ooc, more like I saw a post and ran with it without an ounce of shame, originally posted on Tumblr AGES ago
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-29
Updated: 2018-06-29
Packaged: 2019-05-30 05:47:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,567
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15090299
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deathofaraven/pseuds/deathofaraven
Summary: She'd commandeered his vessel and dragged him out onto Albion's backroads with nothing but empty, ominous promises of adventure and mystery, but this? This was probably the last straw. By all the gods, if he got eaten in this horrible outfit he was going to be furious.





	Many Miles to Go

**Author's Note:**

> Are y'all getting sick of Vic and Reaver yet? I actually wrote this back in December of 2016, when I used to remember how to be spontaneous, and didn't upload it here cuz I wasn't sure what anyone would think about it and I thought I'd forget about it. But I keep going back to it whenever I want a laugh and it's getting really hard to find in my archives, so here it is. Originally written in response to this post of lordriddler's:
> 
> "Fable road trip questions:  
> Who plays the obnoxious music?  
> Who drives the night shift?  
> Who picks the crappy motel?"

They’d been driving for hours—days, actually—and Reaver still had no idea where they were going. Just that it was, supposedly, “important”. He was fairly certain they weren’t even _in_ Albion anymore, but he also had no desire to be kicked out of the car and left alongside the road for arguing. Particularly not at midnight. There _were_ still such things as balverines, after all, and, as cute as they were, being mauled was _not_ on his To Do list.

Victoria had fallen asleep about an hour ago, curled into the passenger seat in what was undoubtedly an uncomfortable position. The muted blue glow of her tattoos through her clothes cast odd shadows against the dashboard and just seemed to add to the fact that everything about this trip seemed creepy. Where were they going? What was the point? …why not just take the private jet and get there faster? Victoria wouldn’t tell him. No mattered how much he bitched—and he prided himself on his great ability to bitch at length for as long as necessary—she remained stoically silent, only telling him to drive until a certain point and then to wake her up. She didn’t even seem to have a map and seemed to just be recounting directions from memory and, honestly, that was concerning. Victoria got lost in _Bowerstone_ , after all. What if she got them lost out here? What if they died and he was found in the same crappy clothes he’d been wearing since they stopped for the night two days ago? His hair looked terrible. It would be the worst death imaginable! Just think of the horrid article in the Times; he’d look awful! He’d always known Victoria would be the death of him, but couldn’t she have killed him while he was in his favourite suit?

The silence in the car was beginning to get painful. He wanted his music back on. Victoria might have been fine with silence, but Reaver was not. The music may have been somewhat _loud_ , but without it the only things he had to focus on were the golden smears of their headlights on the road and his thoughts. And his thoughts were not pleasant.

He kept telling himself it wasn’t out of courtesy that he kept the music off.

The dashboard’s clock was ticking closer to one when he finally reached the crossroad Victoria had directed him to and pulled over. Waking her up was…actually somewhat amusing. She grumbled and complained like a child. Batted away his attempts at prodding her awake, and frowned at his teasing. About ten minutes after he’d started, she finally opened her eyes to glare at him with a half-asleep pout.

“ _Well_ , your highness, here we are,” Reaver told her, gesturing grandly to the pitch-dark world outside the car’s windows. “If you’ve brought me all the way out here just to ravage me, I _must_ say you could have done it _much_ easier, _and_ with much less fuss, back _home_.”

She stared blearily at him for a long moment and, just when he thought she was about to start cursing, she said shortly, “Turn right. Drive for two miles. We’ll stop there for the night. And don’t call me that.”

 _As you wish_ , he thought sarcastically. Mentally ranting to himself about how he was not her chauffeur and, if she wanted to go on mad adventures, she could damn well take herself wherever they were meant to be going. Somehow his mood managed to sour even further as he set eyes on the establishment she intended them to sleep in.

“ _No_. Absolutely _not_. You’ve gone too far,” he fumed, pulling in to the parking lot. Gesturing furiously to the ramshackle wooden inn, he added, “It looks like it was built for a horror movie.”

Victoria, who was far more awake now, glanced between the building and Reaver, amusement quirking her lips. “Really? That’s the argument you go for? It looks fine. Old, but better than nothing.”

“I’m not sleeping there.”

“Then you don’t have to sleep,” she retorted, unbuckling her seatbelt and opening the door. “But I am.”

“When you find yourself _dead_ because the _shack_ is _haunted_ or the owners are _cannibals_ or it collapses out of _sheer spite_ , don’t come whining to me to avenge you.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it.” She leaned over, wrenched the keys out of the ignition, and got out of the car.

“I— _this is my car, Victoria!_ ” he spluttered, making a grab for his keys.

“That’s just too bad, isn’t it?” Smiling sweetly, she slammed the door in his face.

Reaver sat there in stunned silence. Had she just…commandeered his vessel? _What the fuck?_ The cheerful chirp of the auto-lock on the doors engaging started a twitch in his left eye. Oh, how _kind_ of her to lock him in all nice and safe from the things that might want to murder him. She was just a fucking paragon of virtue, wasn’t she? So nice. So sweet. So caring about the concerns of others. Sometimes he wanted to strangle her.

He stared thoughtfully at the steering wheel. It was tempting to leave her here. It wouldn’t be too hard to hotwire the car. He could even arrange an accident later so that the insurance would cover the damages. After all, it—what the fuck was that? A crackling, scratchy sound like something heavy crunching through twigs. And now it had stopped. He could hear the wind whistling through the evergreens that had all but blocked out the sky, but nothing else. No night-time animal sounds. Not even the flapping of bat’s wings or the dull hooting of an owl. Nothing. He could feel eyes on him, though. Not the pleasant, adoring kind he was used to in Bowerstone, but the hungry, eat-your-face-off kind that meant he was probably in danger. Victoria hadn’t told him to come armed, but there was a gun in his suitcase and a knife in his boot, both unfortunately inaccessible at this moment. He was okay in the car, right? That was the point of paying all that money for a nice car—it was supposed to protect you in style. …wasn’t it?

That noise again. _Crunch. Crunch. Crunch. **THUMP.**_ Something dropped onto the roof of the car, heavy enough to shake the entire frame, but not enough to dent it. If he survived long enough to write a journal entry on this, he planned on leaving out the fact that he’d _almost_ screamed. He tried to manoeuvre himself to maybe see what was happening above him, but it wasn’t working. Every time he moved, he only saw trees. His hands brushed against something cold and he quickly looked down to see his black-and-white phone case staring back at him. If he texted Victoria and told her to get her Will-using ass out here to protect his virtue, would she do it? Or would she ignore it and later come out of the inn to find him mauled and the car ripped to shreds? He was too young to die like this—disregarding that “too young” was bullshit and a lie, of course.

 _Click._ The door swung open, blasting him with chilly air, and he whirled around to find Victoria staring bemusedly at him. Reaver didn’t remember getting out of the car. One second he was sitting there, gaping blankly at her, and the next he was outside, frowning at the roof of his car. There was nothing. No sign anything had ever been there more than a couple scattered leaves.

“Erm…Reaver?”

Without a word, he grabbed her and kissed her, anger long since vanished. _Oh, you beautiful, beautiful Hero._ He wasn’t going to die!

“Everything okay?” she enquired the moment she pulled away. She had that frown again, the one that said ‘you’re acting weird and I don’t think you’re telling me everything’.

“Why wouldn’t it be?” he replied, reaching into the front seat to grab his phone, drink, and the bag of candy Victoria had been hoarding.

She responded with a noncommittal hum and began pulling out their bags from the back seat. He didn’t fight her as she led him into the inn, past a cantankerous old man (the inn-keeper Reaver presumed), and up to the tiny room. She was chattering, he was aware, but he hadn’t heard a word of it. He still felt uneasy. Uncomfortable. The kind of discomfort that made him want his gun. The hairs on the back of his neck raised; the eerie unsettled sensation of a painting whose eyes seemed to follow you long past leaving the room. Everything was too still again.

Victoria unlocked the door to their room and Reaver barely noticed it was terrible. Well, he noticed, but it was more accurate to say that he had slept in worse places and he was a bit too preoccupied to complain right now.

“—and there was only one bed, but I didn’t think you’d mind,” Victoria was saying as she closed and locked the door behind them.

Reaver crept towards the window, barely listening to the sounds of her rummaging around in her bag. He peeked out the threadbare, dusty curtains just to make sure. Dozens of golden-orange eyes glowed from the trees across the road. Yes, one bed would be fine. He didn’t think he’d be doing much sleeping tonight.


End file.
